


To Believe in Tomorrow

by seapigeon



Series: Twitter Fluff Prompts [5]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Captain America Steve Rogers/Modern Bucky Barnes, Chronic Pain, Gardens & Gardening, M/M, Past Drug Addiction, Post-Avengers (2012), Shrunkyclunks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-21
Updated: 2020-04-21
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:54:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23761135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seapigeon/pseuds/seapigeon
Summary: Bucky's mornings at the community garden get a little more interesting when the new guy shows up.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Series: Twitter Fluff Prompts [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1432069
Comments: 62
Kudos: 662





	To Believe in Tomorrow

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Deisderium](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deisderium/gifts).



> No words in two months is ROUGH.
> 
> But I finally had two days off in a row, so I went back to these fluffy prompts and they saved me yet again. (The 3/4 bottle of wine may have helped, too. Any mistakes are courtesy of Mme Merlot.)
> 
> This one's from @deisderium: "Steve and Bucky keep being on same shift at the community garden."
> 
> As usual, it's more serious than fluff should be, but we get there. <3
> 
> Title from an Audrey Hepburn quote: "To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow."

Everyone hates the early shift.

That’s what Bucky thought, anyway. He’s not overly fond of early mornings himself, but it’s the time when the fewest people are present to see him struggle with his new prosthetic. Usually it’s just him and Evelyn, the local 81-year-old plant whisperer. She minds her own business. Which is to say, she knows everybody’s business, but keeps her thoughts to herself unless someone really pisses her off. 

Today there’s a new person. A new _guy_ , which is surprising enough. He’s a total beefcake. He looks like he belongs in a gym, not in a garden. What is this, amateur hour? Bucky has seen this before; people’s girlfriends or boyfriends or well-meaning mothers-in-law sign them up for a 4x4 parcel and they plant basil and a few other things that need way more care than they’re willing or able to give, and in a month it’s a neglected mess. Then the people who actually know what they’re doing have to watch perfectly good square footage go to waste for an entire season. Lather, rinse, repeat.

He sighs to himself and pulls his eyes away. Beefcake is not hard to look at, but his seedlings aren’t going to plant themselves. Bucky quickly becomes absorbed in his work. The neural interface for the arm is still pretty new, so he has to concentrate to make sure the arm does what he wants. It’s exhausting but rewarding.

When he looks up an hour later, he’s greeted with a truly excellent view. Beefcake is down on his hands and knees, in the dirt to his wrists. Bucky has a perfect sightline to one of the nicest asses he’s ever seen. Thighs aren’t bad, either. Or the way his shirt rides up his sides as he reaches, revealing a lickable stretch of lat and oblique.

Evelyn clears her throat pointedly from a few feet away. He must be staring. He gives Evelyn a look that makes her laugh and does his best to focus on his work, but it’s been a while. Loss of limb doesn’t exactly make a guy want to put himself out there. Of course he’s horny.

On a more serious note, though, Beefcake actually seems like he might know what he’s doing. If so, that means Bucky can look forward to many mornings like this. One day, he might even work up the courage to ask the guy out to get some coffee. If he’s not married. Or in a relationship. Or straight. 

In another half hour or so, Beefcake finishes up. He cleans his hands with water from his bottle and an honest-to-god handkerchief, and then chugs the rest of the water. Some of it drips down his chin and neck, and…

Ok, wow, Bucky is really horny.

Beefcake catches him looking and offers an absolutely blinding smile. Jesus. He waves, and Bucky waves back. Evelyn does too. Then Beefcake takes his leave, a little spring in his step.

“Subtlety is not your strong suit,” Evelyn says, sidling up next to him. “Good thing Blondie is oblivious.”

“Don’t judge me,” Bucky pouts. “I’m in a drought here.”

“Better your sex life than your garden, dear.”

“Evelyn, we have to talk about your priorities.”

“My priorities are just fine, and so is my sex life,” she says archly. “What’d he plant?”

“I don’t know.”

She purses her lips and goes to inspect.

“Well?” he asks, when she meanders back around.

“Depression garden,” she says. “Potatoes, spinach, turnips, beans. Coupla tomatoes.”

“Doesn’t he need a trellis for the beans? And cages for the tomatoes?”

She smiles at him in what seems like a sweet expression if you don’t know her. Bucky knows better. He expects pure sass, and that’s what he gets.

“I’m sure you’d like to be _his_ trellis.”

“Evelyn, that’s terrible,” he says, mock horrified, clutching imaginary pearls. “And yes. I would. That man can climb all over me any time he wants.”

“You’ve got all summer,” she shrugs. “Don’t fuck it up, kid.”

  
  


He will, inevitably, fuck it up somehow, but it’s nice to have Evelyn’s confidence.

  
  


Beefcake is back the next morning with a trellis and two tomato cages. Bucky can _feel_ Evelyn staring at him, willing him to go over and introduce himself. That’s overfriendly, though, isn’t it? This is still New York, even if it’s a shiny community garden. You don’t just assume people want to know you.

And Beefcake, he smiles and waves again, and seems amicable enough, but he doesn’t come over to introduce himself. Not that day, and not all the next week. Sometimes, when he’s done fussing over his patch of earth, he just sits, arms around his knees and face tilted up to the sky.

This is an escape for him. From what, Bucky can’t begin to guess, but he can practically feel the zen radiating off the guy. This time in the garden does him good. Bucky understands that so intrinsically that he makes up his mind not to butt into someone else’s decompression unless he’s invited.

  
  


Evelyn is not pleased by his lack of action.

“What are you waiting for?” she demands, hose in hand. “A gilded invitation?”

He doesn’t know how to explain it to her...beyond just... _explaining it to her_.

“Look, Evelyn, I started gardening when I was trying to get off heroin,” he says baldly. “It was the first non-harmful thing I found that made my brain feel the way the drug did. And like I was accomplishing something. If I didn’t have this couple of hours every day, and my plants at home, it would be a lot harder to stay clean. It keeps me sane.”

Her face hasn’t gone pitying or shocked like most when he talks about his addiction. She’s just listening keenly as she always does.

“I don’t think it’s drugs for him, but he’s coming here to cope with something. I just know. And I’m not gonna bother him, or keep him from getting what he needs. Okay?”

“Okay,” she says. “But everyone copes better with friends, you know?” She reaches forward and pats his cheek. “You’re a nice boy, Bucky.”

  
  


He’s not.

Of course, that’s an old broken voice talking. He’s never been able to shut it up completely. 

That voice started whispering in Iraq, and it got louder and louder after the injury that sent him home. It was all he could hear when the CRPS set in. That voice, and the endless pain, only stopped with the drugs. When he couldn’t make it through Becca’s wedding without shooting up, he knew he had to stop. He struggled through that night and checked himself into rehab two days later.

He’s been clean for three years, one month, and five days. After trying treatment after treatment for his arm with no improvement in the debilitating pain, he finally made the decision to pursue amputation. It’s been nine months since the surgery, and three with the prosthetic. He never thought his life would be reduced to a series of numbers, but there’s comfort in it. He’s counting up. Not down. 

No more borrowed time. 

He calls Sam, his sponsor and one of the best friends he’s ever had.

“How you doing, Barnes?” he asks, gladness shining through his voice like always. Bucky _lives_ to make Sam sound like that.

“Really good. No pain, and I’m getting the hang of this prosthesis. It’s pretty amazing.”

“Stark Tech usually is.”

“I just wish it was available to more people. The guy’s got more money than God, can’t he just give them away for like, $8?”

“Write him a letter.”

“How many letters does Tony Stark get in a day? He’ll never see it.”

“Doesn’t mean you shouldn’t write it.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right.” He’s quiet for a moment. “Sam, I wanted to ask you something.”

“Go for it.” He can hear the clank of utensils and pots and pans; he’s cooking. That’s Sam’s happy juice.

“There’s this guy.”

“A _guy!_ ” Sam exclaims.

“Don’t get ahead of yourself, we haven’t even spoken. I don’t know his name. But he comes to the garden at the same time as me every day, and he’s really cute, but he’s...I can tell he’s going through something, and I don’t want to intrude. My other garden buddy told me it’s always better with backup, and I think she’s right. But like...I dunno, I want to be supportive but I also kind of want to get in his pants, and maybe my intentions aren’t right?”

“The fact that you’re even worrying about this tells me that your intentions are just fine,” Sam chuckles. “Just introduce yourself and see what happens. That’s all you have to do. No pressure.”

“You always make things sound so simple.”

“That’s the $40,000 counseling degree talking,” he snorts. “Shit, gotta stir my risotto. You good, Barnes?”

“I’m great. Thanks, Sam.”

“Be well.”

“You, too.” He hangs up, and he feels light with the rightness of it.

Tomorrow he’s going to introduce himself to Beefcake.

  
  


That’s all well and good, except Beefcake doesn’t show. It’s the first day he’s missed in almost a month. He controls his disappointment. Tomorrow. He’ll be back tomorrow. People need days off, or they don’t feel well. He’ll be back.

  
  


Except he’s not. After four days Bucky is genuinely worried. There’s absolutely nothing he can do about it; he doesn’t know the guy’s name. To even think about asking the manager of the community garden is an invasion of privacy. But he can’t help but think maybe he waited too long; maybe this guy really did need a friend. Maybe Bucky was too late.

He does the only thing he can: he tends to his garden. Bucky waters and prunes and pours his guilt and anxiety into caring for the other man’s plants. His vegetables are beautiful. Beefcake knows his stuff. Bucky feels a little guilty for judging him early on.

“I’m sure he’s all right,” Evelyn says, hand on his shoulder, on day nine. She seems very certain of it. Bucky doesn’t share her certainty, but he’s still grateful for the optimism.

“He owes me some of this spinach when he gets back,” he says gruffly.

  
  


On day eleven, he walks in. Bucky is so relieved that he has to take a minute hiding behind the aggressive foliage of his Roma tomatoes to get himself together. Five minutes later, Beefcake rounds the edge of Bucky’s raised bed.

“Hey,” he says. He has a fading black eye and steri-strips on his chin. “Evelyn said you took care of my stuff. I was so sure it was all going to be dead. I can’t thank you enough.” His eyes actually go bright and glossy for a second. “Seriously. Thank you so much.”

“It’s no big deal,” Bucky says, emotions everywhere. “I’m Bucky.”

“Steve.” He holds out a hand, and his handshake is firm but not crushing.

“Are you okay?” Bucky blurts.

“Oh, this?” Steve gestures at his face. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

Bucky doesn’t believe him even a little bit. Being MIA for ten days and then showing up with a busted face is the opposite of fine.

“Good,” he says, a little more forcefully than he means to. He’s ready to be mortified, but Steve just smiles.

“If you ever want anything,” he says, “just take it. You don’t have to ask or anything. It’s your garden now, too.”

“Same for me. Except the eggplants. I get a little stabby without baba ghanoush in my life.”

“What’s baba ghanoush?” Steve asks.

And it’s _perfect._ All Bucky has to do is say _Let me take you somewhere to try it_. But that’s maybe his dick thinking for him. Something tells him he has to take this slow. There’s a fragility in Steve’s eyes, or at least there had been for that brief second where he looked like he might cry at the thought of his garden dying.

“I’ll make some for you. Tomorrow, 7 am, breakfast. I’ll bring baba ghanoush and pita. You bring whatever you feel like bringing.”

“I’m...not much of a cook.”

“Champagne is never in poor taste,” Evelyn calls from somewhere, brazen in her eavesdropping.

Steve smiles again, and wow, that really is something.

“Yes, ma’am,” he calls back. “Thank you again, Bucky. I can’t tell you how much it means to me that you did this.”

“You’re so welcome.”

Steve nods, and even though he looks like he wants to keep standing there, he turns and drifts back to his greenery.

  
  
  


Steve’s contribution to breakfast is champagne and a bag of clementines. Evelyn toasts with them and then makes herself scarce. Bucky is so distracted watching Steve house five clementines that he doesn’t notice that it’s _expensive_ champagne until he’s on his second glass.

“Steve--” he starts. He is interrupted.

“This is _so good_ ,” Steve practically moans. “I can’t get over it.” He flushes a little. “I didn’t grow up with food like this. Or much food at all.”

The bruising on his eye is almost gone today. The steri strips are falling off.

“I’m lucky,” Bucky replies. He knows he is; he wanted for nothing growing up in suburban Indiana, except maybe the rebellious stimulation that teenaged ennui always demanded.

“Oh, I was, too. My mother had a good nursing job. We had more than some people did.” He arranges his clementine peels in a shockingly artistic display that has Bucky tilting his head to see it better. “How do you learn how to make food taste like that?”

“I’ll give you the recipe. YouTube is really helpful for cooking techniques, too.” He nudges Steve gently. “You grow these amazing veggies, but you don’t know how to cook them?” 

“I know how to boil or can them. But I was going to donate this stuff to a food bank.”

Okay. How exactly is he supposed to not be all over this guy?

_The guy that’s given you absolutely no indication that he’s into dudes? That one?_

“That’s a great idea,” Bucky grits out.

“Very noble, indeed,” Evelyn agrees, swooping in to finish the last of the champagne.

  
  
  


Things settle back into a pattern. Some days Steve is talkative, and some he’s not. He’s never anything but warm and kind to Bucky, though.

In mid-June, Steve fumbles awkwardly through asking if he can have Bucky’s phone number, in case he has to be away again. It’s a no-brainer. Bucky programs his number in and asks,

“Do you think you’ll have to? Go away again, I mean.”

Steve shrugs, but then his body sags a little. “Probably.”

Bucky’s dying to ask. They’ve talked, but never in detail about Steve's life or why he disappeared. He hasn’t been bruised or bloody since then, thankfully. Bucky doesn’t think it’s an abuse situation, though he’s been wrong before.

“Well, I’ve got you if you do.”

“Thank you,” he says, for the 97th time. “I wish there was some way I could repay you.”

Bucky blinks. He can’t say how, but It feels like the right time.

“You could get a coffee with me.” He fidgets a little. He used to be smooth; not so much now. “Or dinner.”

Steve visibly unwilts. “Or both?”

“Sure,” Bucky says, having to will himself not to smile like a maniac.

  
  
  


Coffee is great. So is dinner. He takes Steve to a Middle Eastern place; Steve tells him that it’s good, but his baba ghanoush is better. Bucky practically proposes to him right then. In any case, he restrains himself, and conversation flows easily. They make each other laugh, and it’s clear when the check arrives that neither of them wants the night to end.

So it doesn’t. They go to a bar or two. Bucky forgets that he hasn’t done this in a while and comes out of the gate a little too fast. Some fries keep buzzed from becoming drunk and the crisis is averted. That little voice in the back of his head tells him it’s too good to be true.

He ignores it.

In a lull, he looks up and is hit with what can only be described as...deja vu. His tongue is loose, and he says, pointing at Steve, “You look like somebody famous.”

The smile slides off Steve’s face like rain off a treated windshield.

Bucky’s mouth is moving faster than his brain. “Anybody ever tell you that? I can’t quite figure out who. But it’ll come to me.”

Steve is utterly silent, face shuttered, and that’s when Bucky realizes he’s fucked up. His stomach drops. Across the table, Steve’s posture has grown tight, and where there was humor and warmth in his eyes before, there’s only a guarded weariness. Steve swallows, and then reaches for his beer.

“Take your time figuring it out,” he says, only just loud enough for Bucky to hear. He looks the way he did when he thought his garden was dead.

“Steve--” Bucky starts. 

“I had fun tonight, Bucky. But I better go.”

“Steve, I don’t know what I did, but--”

Steve stands up. “You didn’t do anything. You’re wonderful.” He kisses Bucky on the cheek. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

Bucky is left half-drunk and desperately confused.

  
  
  


Once the booze clears, though, it only takes one long shower to piece it together.

Steve _is_ someone famous. He clearly doesn’t enjoy that fame, though. Or maybe he’s more infamous than famous. That’s what he’s hiding from in the community garden. So when Bucky started to connect the dots…

Is he even going to show up to the garden today? Or are he and some really lovely plants about to get ghosted? Bucky isn’t sure which one he prefers.

Bucky sighs. He doesn’t care if it’s awkward; the garden was his first, and last night’s debacle of an ending is not going to keep him away. He puts on his shortest shorts, a crop top, and a folded bandanna in his hair. His plants will always be there for him, even if temperamental Beefcake Steve is not.

  
  
  


Shockingly, Steve _is_ there. And he brought a crumb cake and iced coffee. He claims to have made the cake himself at 4 am. The tiny shard of eggshell in Bucky’s piece confirms it. Bucky softens immediately, because he knows guilt and apology when he sees it.

And he supposes maybe he can understand. Fame can be lonely, and invasive, and performative. Maybe this garden is the only place Steve can get a minute to himself. Maybe it’s the only place he can _be_ himself. Of course he’d get twitchy if he thought he was about to be recognized.

“I’m sorry,” Steve says a little while later. “You didn’t deserve that, last night.”

Absolution is easy. “It’s all right.”

Steve smiles, but there’s still something sad about him.

They sit in silence for a while. It’s hot as balls; Bucky can practically hear himself sweating. Not what he’d call sexy, but Steve is dripping sweat, too, just sitting there. Baking in the heat multiplied by the pavement.

“Got any plans for the 4th?” Bucky chances. 

Steve huffs a laugh, but there isn’t a trace of humor in it. “Yeah.” He doesn’t elaborate past that, though, and it rubs Bucky the wrong way.

“Look, if you’re not interested in hanging out again, just say so.”

Steve reaches out and grasps his wrist. “No, it’s not that. Not at all. I meant what I said, I had a great time. I just…” he pauses, frowning. “You really didn’t…?”

Oh. Bucky gets it now.

“You told me not to think about it, so I didn’t think about it,” he replies, cross. “You want me to start Googling?”

“No. God, no.”

“Okay, then. Answer my damn questions like a normal person if you wanna be one.”

Steve lets go with a weird little noise. But when Bucky looks up, he’s smiling again, for real.

“Okay. I’m sorry. Yeah, I have plans on the 4th. Nothing I really want to go to, but I can’t get out of it.” He looks the tiniest bit nervous when he goes on. “But...what about the 7th? I like that day better.”

Bucky glances at his calendar on his phone. It’s mostly to make Steve squirm a little, because Lord knows his social calendar is not thriving. He does sometimes have a Skype call with Sam or Becca scheduled, or his NA meetings.

“I can do the 7th,” he allows. “What’d you have in mind?”

Steve beams, and it feels like smooth sailing again.

  
  
  


He’s watching the fireworks when it clicks.

He really wasn’t _trying_ to figure it out. But with all the red, white, and blue, and Steve’s cryptic bitterness about today, the puzzle comes together.

Bucky has to sit down for a minute or ten.

  
  
  


He walks home after the fireworks so he can think. Finally, he texts Steve.

_Happy birthday._

That’s as good a way to tell him as any.

A little before midnight, Steve texts back.

_It’s not actually my birthday. Govt changed it. Said it was more patriotic._

No wonder he’s bitter. They basically erased him.

_Is your real birthday the 7th?_

He gets several smiley emojis in response. Bucky feels weirdly choked up for a second. That’s followed by a rush of white-hot determination. He is going to make sure Steve has the best...95th?...birthday possible. There won’t be any fireworks or flags or dancers, but something tells him that’s not Steve’s kind of party anyway.

  
  
  


He’s right. All Steve really wants to do is eat and go to an art museum.

After the Met, Korean barbecue, and overpriced hipster ice cream, they end up at Bucky’s place. It feels like it did the other night. Effortless. Magnetic.

They’re going to kiss, and probably more, if they let themselves.

“You...really don’t care?” Steve asks as they lay on the couch together, the apartment a cocoon around them. There’s a breeze from the window that ruffles his hair.

“No.” Bucky props up on his elbow. “It is good to know, though, that you’re not, like, in an abusive relationship or anything. When you were gone and then showed up with your face all wrecked…”

“That was Avengers business." There's a pause, and then he says, very quiet and far too honest, "I don’t have anything I’d call a relationship right now. With anyone."

Christ. He’s only been awake, what, less than a year? No family, no friends, not even a world he knows. Just demands from people and places that see a caricature instead of a person. Bucky tries to imagine it and he can’t; even at his lowest, his absolute worst, he knew his family was there and they loved him for exactly who he was. Drugs and all.

“Well, you got one with me now, Rogers,” he says, around the lump in his throat and the ache in his heart. 

“Promise?” Steve asks, lips quirking up on one side, eyes showing everything.

Bucky answers with a kiss.

  
  


Evelyn doesn’t miss them arriving to the garden together the next morning, thirty minutes late.

“Oh _ho_ ,” she says, smirking. “What is this?”

“What’s what?” Steve says innocently, like he isn’t still pink up to his ears, aglow with the aura of good sex.

Evelyn sprays them with the hose.

“My _hair_!” Bucky screeches. He’d taken the time to French braid it, for fuck’s sake, and that's _hard_ with the prosthetic. Steve laughs and gallantly shields Bucky from the spray until she stops. But that just means he has to look at Steve in a wet t-shirt for the rest of the morning.

He can hardly be blamed for dragging Steve right back to his apartment for round two.

**Author's Note:**

> CRPS = Complex Regional Pain Syndrome  
> https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/crps-complex-regional-pain-syndrome/symptoms-causes/syc-20371151
> 
> I wrote this in for Bucky because it's an iteration I've not seen before for his arm (though it may very well be out there in fic-land). The pain with this syndrome can be so bad that amputation is preferable to living with it, though it is somewhat controversial and seen as a last resort.


End file.
